media experts

American Demographics, April 1, 2003 by Joe Mandese

Jones's theories liberated advertisers and agencies from an older school of media planning, one that sought to achieve a specific number of exposures to an ad - usually three or more. The older approach assumed that consumers needed several exposures to an ad message to be motivated to buy. By proving that just one exposure can be effective, Jones shifted the ad industry's focus from frequency to maximum reach and continuity.

Barry Fischer

When Barry Fischer left one of the most powerful media jobs on Madison Avenue in 1996 to oversee the market research and sales strategy for Turner Broadcasting, some people thought it was another example of a top agency exec selling out to the media side. After all, Fischer was regarded as one of the toughest and smartest buyers in the business. And as media director of Wells Rich Greene and top negotiator for a big chunk of Procter & Gamble's national TV advertising account, he had clout.

Fischer was courted by then-Turner sales chief Steve Heyer - a former top executive at Booz Allen Hamilton and Young & Rubicam, and now president of Coca-Cola Co. - to come up with a bulletproof piece of research that would change how advertisers thought about buying cable and broadcast TV.

That was no easy task. After years of marketing and research, the cable industry had managed to convince ad agencies that it was a cheaper option than broadcast, but not a substitute. Instead of developing research that reinforced cable's cost-value ratio, Fischer came up with a sophisticated study that deconstructed and reengineered the TV advertising schedules of the nation's largest advertisers to create alternative scenarios that would generate the same or greater audience reach with mixes that relied more on cable TV. And his method did so without sacrificing the buying of high-rated broadcast shows, like Friends, that marketers cherished.

The research, which was presented in two waves in 1996 and 1997, in a series of studies and events dubbed "Media at the Millennium," worked brilliantly. Coming just as marketers and agencies were trying to develop systems that would allow them to optimize their TV mix to gain greater reach and better efficiencies [see Kate Lynch profile], Madison Avenue embraced Fischer's Millennium research as a way to rationalize shifting money from broadcast to cable.

Ironically, Fischer says he doesn't think of himself as a researcher: "For me, research is an end to the means. I don't like doing it, but I like what it can do."

In His Own Words

The most important dynamic in consumer media usage or advertising in the past 25 years has been the advent of choice in the national TV arena. Ultimately, client advertising campaigns improved their effectiveness by improving targeting, minimizing waste, improving efficiencies and finding more creative ways to reach the consumer. National cable delivered on these promises. Most importantly, it has allowed people to maintain continuity. People may long for the more simple days of the three-broadcast-network world, but it's hard to imagine an advertising schedule in which clients could afford only one 30-second announcement every two weeks. When managing the Procter & Gamble agency-of-record assignment, along with a variety of other national accounts - all of which were heavily invested in cable - I was able to see firsthand the remarkable advantages the medium brought to individual client brands.